CHAPTER VIII. 



CONDITIONAL AND HYPOTHETICAL JUDGMENTS AND 

 PROPOSITIONS. 



132. ANALYSIS OF THE &quot;!F&quot; JUDGMENT : ITS RELATION 

 TO THE SIMPLE OR CATEGORICAL JUDGMENT. So far we have 

 been dealing mainly with the simple or categorical judgment. We 

 must now revert to the division of judgments on the basis of 

 &quot;Relation&quot; as given in a previous chapter (83, 84). The most 

 important classes of compound judgment are the hypothetical, and 

 the disjunctive or alternative (including copulative and remotive). 

 With the hypothetical we shall deal in the present chapter ; with 

 the remaining kinds in the next chapter. 



The propositions which we now purpose to examine are all 

 characterized by the presence of the conjunction &quot;if&quot; introducing 

 a conditional clause called the antecedent or protasis (or conditid), 

 on which depends a second part or clause called the consequent 

 or apodosis (or conditionatum). For example, If all prophets spoke 

 the truth some would be believed. Their force or function is to 

 assert some sort of relation or connexion of dependence between 

 antecedent and consequent. Their truth or falsity will therefore 

 depend, not at all on the truth or falsity of the constituent parts 

 taken separately, but on whether the relation between these parts 

 is or is not what it is asserted to be. 



As a process of thought, the &quot; if&quot; judgment is not fundamentally different 

 from the simple or categorical judgment : the former as well as the latter is 

 a judgment, and must fulfil the definition of a judgment : it must make a pre 

 dication or statement which will be verifiable in some sphere or other of 

 objective reality : but, while the predication made in the categorical judgment 

 is simple and unqualified, that which is made in the &quot; if&quot; judgment is quali 

 fied, conditioned, limited in a certain way. The latter &quot; asserts a predicate of 

 the subject of the consequent, under a condition expressed in the antecedent ; 

 and if that condition can be expressed as an adjective of the subject of the 

 consequent, then of that subject, so qualified, we may assert the predicate in 

 the consequent categorically. But we do not thus reduce hypothetical 

 to categorical judgments : the hypothetical meaning remains under the 



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